Animators either have a great wife, several wives or no wives at all                                                                                               

                                                                      --Richard Williams

Animation Mentor Class 1 Progress Reel

Be a sponge, observe & absorb life:

As an animator, you bring your life experience with you that is reflected in your work. Everyone brings something different. Animation, is an extension of reality and thus, you need to observe life around you. Look at how much time an old person takes to get up from the bench and how kids keep jumping around, how people's head never really stop moving, observe how people get curious about the person sitting besides them, how everyone turns to see a person when they enter in the waiting room and how different it is for a girl and a guy.

Observe how a cat behaves when you throw food at it or how a person reacts when he's barked at. As an animator it's your job to study movement, if you don't understand movement, you've got no business being an animator. I didn't say that!! For an artist, the real world is the best mentor. So, when you're taking your evening stroll, turn your head around and look at people, look at leaves falling and look at kids jumping, keep storing it in your head. Someday you'll get a shot and you'll wonder how to do it, that's the time you can just dig into the storage area and say, hey, i can make her tilt her head while talking like that lady at the store, and she can walk like my aunt. 

Once you start seeing, you'll find how much really happens around us that we never cared to notice. life becomes so full. And yeah, there's a side-effect to this, i thought I'll share that as well. 

YOU CAN"T SHUT DOWN THE ANIMATOR IN YOU

Your brain is always working, looking for new things and when you find something, you're so absorbed into it, that you forget that you came in with another person in the coffee shop. You never stop learning, you never stop thinking (I wonder if that's the reason all my hair is grey now) and you'll never stop enjoying life.

Find your Inspiration

Be Inspired. Animation is not a lazy bird's catch. It demands your passion and a lot of hard work and you need to be patient. There are days in every animator's(every artist's) when they doubt themselves, when it seems too much to do and you say to yourself,"I'm a loser, How will I do this. You feel like quitting and doing something else. HANG IN THERE buddy!!! It'll pass. You need to stay inspired, do what you love doing, anything!! Watch movies and promise yourself to achieve that quality, hang out with friends, look at some great work, read about the great people in history, anything, maybe you can look at your own shots from sometime back. and get back to what you have to do, you'll get there.  You need to love this stuff if you want to be great at it.and the biggest thing... don't be afraid to try new things and learn new things.

HAVE FUN FELLOW ANIMATORS!!!
The only way you can breathe life in a character is by having one yourself.
                                                                                      --BRAD BIRD

Basic Foundations

No, I'm not gonna talk about timing, spacing, arcs or squash n stretch (oh! that reminds me that I have to Read Illusion of Life). I want to share with you what I learned, before I learned anything about animation at The School. Mind you, these might not be techniques of Animation, but these are the most important things you need to be an animator....

For starters and for those experienced, ALWAYS, FOLLOW THE BASICS. you've probably heard this one a lot of times and you might be thinking,"oh , not again!!."  I am no different. We feel like we already know that we need to squash the volume on impact, "I want to get to the advanced stuff like facial animation and acting shots. No matter how well you know the basics, there is always some way of applying them that you haven't tried so far. You need to repeatedly dive into the basics and look for new ways of applying them to make your shots interesting;. And importantly, all the advanced stuff and higher concepts are all based on the application of these Principles of animation. you will never be able to excel into those unless you master the simple concepts like the bouncing ball.

DO NOT BE SHY, Evrer (to be continued)

Actually I was feeling really sleepy last night when I was blogging. So, if you've found some very silly spelling mistakes, Excuse me for those.

Okay, at AM we have a wonderful environment. You put up your work and there are so many many animators, fellow students, senior students, professional animators plus your campus mentors that review your work and give you their valuable feedback. it ranges from, "Hey, I think you did a great job on your bouncing ball assignment!!" to "I really like you've done but you could probably do this, and that, and that and oh yeah, doing that would really make awesome". Every feed back is valuable.You're creating something for others to see and like and that means you must show your work to people and find out what they think of it before you go on to release it or submit or whatever stage you move to next. 

So, show your work to people and ask for feedback. It doesn't necessarily have to be from someone from this field, it could be anybody, your mom, dad, sister, friend, your neighbour, driver, anybody. they might not know how to fix the problem with your animation but they will look at it from a perspective which you are making your animation for. they are your audience. 

Working on the same thing for days at a stretch you get tired and confused and you've seen it too many times to find out your mistakes.At this time you need Fresh eyes. Get them. 

Some people would say, "this is so mediocre,!! Why dont you make it like they do at PIXAR. Well my friends, PIXAR didn't come to existence in one day. animation is not easy, it takes patience, time, practice and relentless working.
And for starters, you have just as valuable an opinion about a shot as anyone else who's a master at this art. So, give your opinion to the animator about what you think. I once saw a "work in progress" on facebook and i saw that the eye blinks weren't properly done. I wanted to write it to him but then I saw that he had studied at Animation Mentor. And I said to myself, " this guy studied at AM, he must be knowing more than I do, I'm a nobody to say anything about his work" and i didn't give him any feedback. This was before I went to study at Am. The thing is, it doesn't matter where the feedback is coming from, it's what the feedback is what's important. You are the audience for that animator and the shot is meant for the audience to see. Thus, you should express what you feel about it. It really helps the animator grow and learn more.
AND ASK FOR FEED BACK TOO... that's the only way you can judge where you stand.

Living the Dream....

Hi! For those of you don't know, I am Roshan, living in New Delhi, India. I remember the time after passing out of school, when I had to choose what I wanted to do in my life. Even though my heart had already fallen for Animation, lack of knowledge about the field and a very conventional option of BCA(Bachelor of Computer Applications) at hand, I wasn't able to make a decision. And that was the time "Maths" came to rescue. Since I was a total loser at maths, BCA lost points and I had a wonderful friend of mine, shouting at me for not choosing what I really wanted to do. Ultimately I dived into the world of Animation. And here I am today, living my dream of learning Character Animation from some of the world's best animators. these are the same people who breathe life into Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Wall-E, Flynn Rider, Rapunzel, Alex the Lion, Marty, Po, Hiccup and toothless and all of our favourite cartoon charactres.

Finally after two years of researching and dreaming and researching, I am a student at Animation Mentor.com.

It's week 3 of Class I and I am with the wonderful and "a Harley Davidson:" personality, Paul Allen, He's a great Mentor currently working at Terminal Reality Gaming Studios in Texas, America.